Thursday, October 26th in Wenatchee, WA was The Big Day. Jay was hoping to break 20 minutes in the 5k for the first time in the JV race. Our boys varsity team was hoping to qualify for the state meet as a team for the first time in 29 years. Spoiler alert: it all happened! The district meet is my favorite meet to be a coach. SO MANY emotions! It surprises me every year how much I grow to love the kids on our team over the course of a season. Each season is a little different with group dynamics, and this year we had such a fun core group on our team. The varsity boys were a delightful mix of playful and dedicated, the JV boys were exploring their abilities in exciting ways, and the sweet girls courageously worked toward their goals every single day.
After securing a ride home from school with kind friends for Rose and Amber, Jeff and I were able to focus on our coaching job. The school bus left Sunnyside High School at 11am and arrived in Wenatchee at 1:30pm. It was 45 degrees with a bite in the breeze, and we immediately set up our triple-canopy tent with all of the walls up to keep the team warm.
The first race of the day was girls JV. We had three girls in that race. On the starting line, I told them, "think back to the beginning of the season and how it felt to run 3.1 miles--how hot it was, how long it took, how hard it was. Now, think about today--all the work you've done, how fit you are, how much cooler the weather is. You are ready!" That was my pep talk. Those three girls are the sweetest, and they started the race with courage. Two of them were hoping to run the 5k in under 30 minutes for the first time, and the third girl was hoping to finish without walking. One ran a 29:49, one ran a 30:05 (SEVEN minutes faster than she ran 2 months ago), and the third girl didn't walk. She ran with a girl from another team the entire race, and with a quarter mile to go, Jeff told them to either race each other to the finish or cross the line holding hands. They chose to hold hands. Cue the coach-tears. All three girls worked so hard and I felt so proud.
The next race was the boys JV race--Jay's race, and the largest race of the day, with 155 boys in it (girls JV only had 44 runners). Even though Jay was nervous, he looked strong and confident the whole entire race. Jeff and I were running all over the course to watch our son and his teammates, and every time we saw Jay, we said "Jay is having a great run!" He had that glint in his eye and he was not slowing down. He has been wanting to break 20 minutes for the entire season, and he finally did it with a definitive 19:29! Cue the coach-mom tears. I felt so proud and happy. Jay finished in 53rd place. When he had walked through the long finishing chute, Jeff and I took turns hugging him, sweat and all. Then we had to remember that we were coaches to a dozen other JV boys, and we made sure to talk to them as well.
After boys JV came girls varsity. We had 6 girls in this race. It was cold and I stood by the start with a box for them to put their warmup sweats in right before the race started. The girls kept saying how scared and nervous they felt, so I did my best to say lots of positive words and remind them that they were ready for this race. One sweet senior girl turned to me and said "Coach, can I have a hug?" So I gave her a big two-armed hug. Then our team captain said "me too!" and after that the rest of the girls lined up for a coach-hug. It melted my heart and made me love them even more than I already did. Every single one of those six girls ran a significant personal record in that race! Annnnd, you guessed it, more coach-tears. Even though none of them qualified for state, 100% of our nine girls ran lifetime PRs at the district meet. It was an amazing high note to end on.
The final race of the day was the boys varsity. We were lucky to even have our top five guys eligible to compete--our 4th man had to stage what he called "the greatest academic comeback of all time" over the week prior to the district meet in order to get eligible to race. In our district, the top 14 individuals and the top two teams qualify for the state meet. We had at least two guys who had finished in the top 14 in a previous meet, so we were relatively certain that we'd have someone going to state, but we knew our team was strong enough to potentially get second place and have all seven of the runners go to state as a team! Wenatchee was the team we had to beat, so for the entire race, we were looking for purple shorts and counting places to see who was where and if a second place finish was possible. The race was the most cutthroat cross country race of the season. Those guys were flying. The top 21 finishers went under 17 minutes, and the top SIX guys went under 16 minutes (including two of our own!).
Our fifth man was looking iffy halfway through the race, but he was hanging onto the tail of two Wenatchee guys. He'd drop back, then surge and hold onto them again. We knew he needed to pass them for our team to make it to state. When the trio hit the homestretch, Alex was still right behind the two Wenatchee guys. We were yelling and cheering our throats raw for him to PASS THEM! He bided his time as the finish line got closer and closer, then suddenly he took off and outkicked them to the line. This time my coach-tears spilled out of my eyes and down my cheeks. We weren't sure, but we thought our boys team had gotten second place and made it to state! Jeff, Dan Winger, and I found each other in the crowd and had a group hug, kind of jumping up and down together in our hopeful jubilation.
Still, we weren't sure. It was too hard to keep track of the other teams' places and points, and Wenatchee might have beaten us anyways. We sat through the awards for all of the other races until the very end, when they announced the state qualifying boys teams. 7th, 6th, 5th, and 4th were all announced. When the coach said "and in third place..." we all held our breath and listened. When he said "and in third place, with a score of 80 points, Wenatchee!" our entire team erupted in cheers and clapping. I felt a little bad for that, but how could we restrain ourselves!? When the coach said "And in second place, with a score of 72 points, Sunnyside!" it was surreal. Our boys varsity and JV all went down together to be recognized as a state qualifying team. It was amazing.
We returned to our team tent and Jeff followed through on his promise made last year: if the boys team qualifies for state, they could give him any kind of haircut that they wanted. He even brought the clippers and a battery pack to power them. Jeff sat on a water cooler and handed the clippers to one of the guys. The entire team clustered around, pressing closer and closer to watch the hairy carnage. It was hilarious. I'm not sure any of the varsity boys had ever even used hair clippers before, but they kept trying until eventually handing the clippers off to a JV guy who claimed to have more haircut savvy. The result was a very patchy bald mullet with a failed "XC" shaved into the back of the mullet hair. Everyone was laughing and taking videos and it was one of my favorite coaching highlights in six years of coaching high school cross country.
We made our traditional post-district-meet team trip to Red Robin for a late dinner before the long bus ride back to Sunnyside. We got home to our house at 11:20pm. Our boys' team is going to state on my birthday!
We love cross country!
2 comments:
Best.
Coaches.
EVER!
Congratulations Sunnyside XC team! You are ALL winners!
Also: that first photo (Jay running) is REALLY good! Well-composed, balanced (rule of thirds), gorgeous background of sky and mountains, captured Jay in perfect running stride……You have some pretty amazing photography skills, especially considering you are in the middle of running around coaching!
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